Pacific Country Comes Up With Brutal “Force-Feeding” Punishment for Dangerous Criminals

From time to time we hear stories of prisoners going on hunger strikes, typically in protest of their treatment or conditions and usually brought to an end once prison officials begin force feeding the inmate to keep him alive.

The southeast Asian nation of Indonesia has taken the idea of force feeding prisoners and given it a rather brutal twist, as they are considering using the method to execute some prisoners instead of saving their lives, according to Al Jazeera.

With an estimated 4.5 million drug addicts in the country, about 1 percent of the total population, and roughly 33 people dying from overdoses everyday, the Indonesian government is looking to seriously crack down on the drug dealing criminals they catch.

As such, the National Narcotics Agency has suggested that convicted drug dealers be force fed their own narcotics until they die as a severe method of punishment. Drug dealers already face execution by firing squad for their crimes.

“We need to be serious because drugs are the enemy,” said agency spokesman Slamet Pribadi.

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“We have to fight this war on drugs everywhere,” said Hendro Pandowo, a local police chief who recently oversaw a drug raid in Jakarta that resulted in the deaths of a police officer, informant, and two gang members. “They have to be cleaned off the streets of Jakarta and eradicated throughout Indonesia.”

Of course, many are decrying the brutal new method of execution that has been suggested, with public health officials and volunteers who work with addicts worrying that the crack down will only make it more difficult for them to help struggling addicts.

Others worry that Indonesia’s drug laws make little distinction between addicted users and criminal dealers, pointing out the fact that nearly 70 percent of the nation’s prison population is made up of low-level drug offenders such as addicts.

Sadly, these drug-using inmates find little relief from their addictions in prison, as mass quantities of drugs easily find their way inside the walls and barbed wire, often reportedly with the help of corrupt guards.

The proposal to execute drug dealers by force feeding them their own drugs appears to be a stark reversal from a decision at the end of 2015 to temporarily halt all executions, but nevertheless seems in line with some of their other methods for dealing with criminals, such as using crocodiles, piranhas and tigers as prison “guards” to dissuade inmates from attempting to escape.

It is hoped that this new method of execution for drug dealers will convince others to avoid using or dealing drugs altogether, and in that we wish them success, though this particular form of cruel and unusual punishment would never pass constitutional muster in the United States.